The Complete Costume Dictionary

While there are costume and fashion dictionaries tied to specific countries or periods, none have been comprehensive. In The Complete Costume Dictionary, Elizabeth Lewandowski has collected from a variety of sources—including costume history texts, journal articles, historical publications, autobiographies, biographies, foreign language dictionaries, and contemporary publications—to create a resource that spans the globe, from the earliest record of fashion to the 21st century.

Including more than 20,000 fashion and costume terms, this volume also features more than 300 illustrations. The first section of the book is an alphabetical listing of these words with their definitions, period, and country of origin. This volume also contains appendixes that list the terms by country of origin, period, and type of clothing. The book is not limited to the Western World and includes both archaic and current terms.

Significantly greater in scope than anything currently available—online or in print—this one-of-a-kind publication is an invaluable resource for costume and fashion historians, textile preservationists, period re-enactors, and history and theatre scholars, as well as theatre professionals.